Showing results by narrator "Jean Ann Douglass" in All Categories

1959: Grace is a young mother with four children under four. All she ever wanted was to have a family of her own, but there are thoughts Grace cannot share with anyone in the months after childbirth. Instead she pours her deepest fears into the pages of a notebook, hiding them where she knows husband, Patrick, will never look. When Grace falls pregnant again, she turns to her sister, Maryanne, for help.

A startlingly frank memoir, Quitter documents one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatment.

When faced with complex challenges or uncertain outcomes, many leaders believe that if they are smart enough, work hard enough, or turn to the best management tools, they will be able to find the right answer, predict and plan for the future, and break down tasks to produce controllable results. But what are leaders to do when this isn't the case? Rather than offering one-size-fits-all tips and tricks drawn from the realm of business as usual, Simple Habits for Complex Times provides three integral practices that enable leaders to navigate the unknown.

It seems like magic when some new gadget seems to know what we want before we know ourselves. But why does some design feel intrinsically good, and why do some designs last forever, while others disappear? User Friendly guides listeners through the hidden rules governing how design shapes our behaviour, told through fascinating stories such as what the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island reveals about the logic of the smartphone; and how the pressures of the Great Depression and World War II created our faith in social progress through better product design....

The lymphatic system is the body's first line of defence against illness and is responsible for ridding the body of toxins, waste and other unwanted materials. When it's not functioning well, it's easy to see and feel the bloat, puffiness and general malaise it causes. Lisa Levitt Gainsley combines her 25 years of experience as a lymph specialist with scientific know-how to show us how lymphatic treatment is the missing link to our most common health woes.

Scientists are beginning to understand that the diseases affecting humans—cancer, obesity, diabetes, organ degeneration and autoimmune disorders—also afflict canines. As a result, our canine companions are vexed with health problems throughout much of their lives and have shorter life spans. Since our pets can’t make health and lifestyle decisions for themselves, it’s up to pet parents to make smart choices for their dogs’ lasting vitality and health. The Forever Dog gives us the tools to protect our four-legged friends.

The book will draw on Kristin Neff's own life story, as well as the stories of other women, to show how listeners can harness self-compassion and gain the strength, clarity and courage needed to be resilient and stand up for themselves in our male-dominated society. She'll explore core issues such as gender differences, why women aren't more compassionate to themselves and what women do for love. With expert research, concrete tools and easy-to-follow mindfulness practices, this book will empower women to let go of self-criticism, draw boundaries and become fierce.

A global pandemic, Depression-level unemployment, civil and political unrest - it feels as if the world as we know it is faltering. Through it all, our spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion.

In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain?

Far from the kingdom of Torvald, on the Western Isles near the coast, sea dragons rule the skies. Lila is the daughter of the Raider leader, destined to take his place one day aboard their plundering ships. Her people value only what trinkets they can get their hands on, but she aspires to much more than that: Lila wants the Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries, dragon riders who help protect merchant fleets and navies from attack. Her father Kasian is skeptical, but a young monk named Danu comes bearing a prophecy claiming that Lila is the lost heir of Roskilde, a born Dragon Rider.

Dena was a busy midwife trapped on the hamster wheel of working motherhood. Adam was an eccentric Buddhist yogi passing as a hardworking dad. Bella was 14 and wanted to be normal. Sophia was up for anything that involved skipping school. Together, they shouldered backpacks, walked away from their California life of all-night births, carpool schedules, and Cal Skate, and crisscrossed India and Nepal for eight months - a journey that led them to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the tree where the Buddha sat, and the arms of Amma the Divine Mother.

In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child-development milestones to what’s admissible in a court of law to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.

Apple orchards in bucolic Washington state. Office parks in Southern California under cover of night. The home of an elderly man in Miami. These are some of the workplaces where female workers have suffered brutal sexual assault and shocking harassment at the hands of their employers, often with little or no official recourse. In this harrowing yet often inspiring tale, investigative journalist Bernice Yeung exposes the epidemic of sexual violence levied against women farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitorial workers and charts their quest for justice in the workplace.

Callie Delgado always puts family first, and unfortunately her brother knows it. She’s emptied her savings, lost work, and spilled countless tears trying to keep him out of trouble, but now he’s in deeper than ever, and his debt is on Callie’s head. She’s given a choice: Do some dirty work for the mob, or have her brother returned to her in tiny pieces.

Contrary to long-held belief, trauma is not only caused by exposure to a single, extreme event. The cumulative effect of common stressors that we encounter in our day-to-day lives can have an equally significant impact on our mental and physical well-being. From difficult childhoods, to bereavements, pregnancy and childbirth, and even stressful jobs, traumas - both large and small - are a part of life we can't control, but we can change the way we respond to them.

Business as usual is over. The age of hyper-change is upon us, and technology is at the forefront. Since the dawn of the microchip, exponential growth has defined modern technology. Today, entire industries are being upended by software, sensors, cameras, LiDAR, processors, and optics — all growing smaller by the day.

If you find yourself running away from fear, you’re running in the wrong direction. Fear demands that we move toward it, face it, and hear its messages. When we fail to do this, the price is high - chronic anxiety, sleeplessness, damaged relationships, skyrocketing pharmaceutical use, and more.

Far from the kingdom of Torvald, on the Western Isles near the coast, sea dragons rule the skies. Lila is the daughter of the Raider leader, destined to take his place one day aboard their plundering ships. But she aspires to much more: Lila wants the Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries, dragon riders who help protect merchant fleets and navies from attack. Her father Kasian is skeptical, but a young monk named Danu - with a quest of his own - comes bearing a prophecy claiming that Lila is the lost heir of Roskilde, a born dragon rider.

From humble beginnings, a heroine will be forged in fire. Forced to retreat from the army of the dead with her remaining force of Raiders and their dragons, Lila begins to despair that her people will ever be anything but a ragtag band. Even wielding the fabled crown of Roskilde, she cannot unite the Raiders - it seems she is not the one to fulfill Danu’s cherished prophecy. But Danu isn’t giving up yet. Though he suspects the evil Havick has obtained an ancient book that will allow him unspeakable power, help may come from an unlikely source: the dragon Riders of Torvald.

Lila knows her people’s way of life is dying, but trying to get Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries is no easy task. Although the world around them is changing, many among the Raiders still cling to the old ways of piracy. When a desperate message arrives from the West Witches, Lila and her new friend, the eccentric, unseasoned magician Danu, must risk a mission to the island of Sebol to learn what they can of the new danger they face, a threat that menaces all the Western Isles.